black people don't but Black people do
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
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It's a political choice that some folks in the Black liberation movement choose in order to emphasise Blackness. Not all Black people do it. I don't think anyone would tell you off for choosing to capitalise it or not. Both are quite common.
I just want to be correct, but it still seems like a white person who writes for the NY Times idea and not universal for all black people, and that seems.... cringey.
I got myself into a tizzy last year as I was editing a document and it was on a person who uses they/them pronouns, and I wasn't sure if I should use "themself" or "themselves" as themself isn't a word, but plural also doesn't sound right. Then I realized a person who uses they/them probably cared less about this than I do.
A lot of lit from the Black liberation movement uses "Black". I'd say that the majority of people I've seen capitalise Black have been Black themselves. That isn't to say it represents a majority of Black people, but also I don't think "what do the majority of this group think" is the best metric for determining what's right—e.g. a significant amount of women are figureheads of the anti-abortion movement, but that doesn't mean that they're right or not misogynistic.
I wasn’t sure if I should use “themself” or “themselves”
Different people who use they/them will have different preferences. If you don't know the person's preference, I doubt they'd care about which you go with, and if they did, they can reach out to you after the fact and ask you to change it or to use a different option going forward in the future.
It was a clinical note so I had to choose, but I'm picky haha.
One guy I know likes to be called Steve
Who are you?
How do we know each other?
Steve too? I haven't seen you at the meetings
Haven't been to a meeting in years.
I know, they're "mandatory". But it's not like anyone takes a head count. And nobody's even noticed I wasn't going anymore.
Becides, they're always the same bullshit. Anything actually important will be in the newsletter. It's fine.
What's his name?
Hold on, let me ask the black hivemind.
We are the Blarg. Resistance is futile.
Black*
Bless your heart.
Wow that's kinda fucked up. Did he really deserve to be devastated like that?
Black hive mind
Am black. Doesn't matter so long as it's consistent (i.e. black and white or Black and White).
How do you feel about the 2001 game "Black & White" by Lionhead Studios?
Funny you say that, because the generally accepted style is Black and white. Here's Microsoft's style guide for another example.
Generally speaking, capital "W" White tends to have supremacist overtones in print.
Funny you say that, because the generally accepted style is Black and white. Here’s Microsoft’s style guide for another example.
TIL
Generally speaking, capital “W” White tends to have supremacist overtones in print.
You got what I was getting at. It's a sign I've noticed. Some commenters will make it a point to type White and black or will use constructs like "a black" or "the blacks."
Yeahhh, anytime it goes adjective to noun I'm like 😬
US race relations are really, really weird.
I mean, I'm not complaining about the lack of a White History or Straight Pride Month
Lots of generally accepted bigotry throughout society, even in the constitution
I just only seem to think it came from some idea from the NY Times, and I don't think anyone says White, so it just seems, off kilter I guess I'd say. Of course I will say whatever is proper, but it's just, odd.
I'm a white guy, but that seems weird to me. We capitalize a country or origin (e.g., English, African), but not a description. We don't capitalize "redhead" or "tall."
We do capitalise community names though - like deaf vs Deaf.
This is the same, it's not being used as a description of how someone looks, but to what community they belong.
We also capitalize the Native in Native American even though it’s just an adjective.
TIL. Thank you.
Never seen that anywhere before. I don't think your 'we' is the same as our 'we.'
Interesting, never heard that with respect to Deaf or whatever.
I agree, I would use a capital when writing about "the Black community". Otherwise it would be lowercase ("a black person/a white person")
Depends where you are
It’s common for Australian Aboriginals to call their community Blak
Dunno why you’d capitalize black unless it was at the start of a sentence. No one capitalizes white.
Even if you’re in America not all black people are African Americans. Black ppl come from all over the world. (Duh.)
Stupid designations about something that doesn’t matter, but they’re the best we’ve got.
This was a decision that I think the NY Times made to start capitalizing, and I've never understood why, but editors of books and articles all use it now, I saw it in a Stephen King story recently.
Language does change, a book by the trans writer Jennifer Finney Boylan about her own transition published in 2001 used transgendered through the book simply because that's what was used then, and now it's proper to say transgender; Jenny's book was released for an anniversary edition and she addressed that in the foreword, that she had left it as written but with some hesitation that people would be offended, which I think would be silly because it was never a slur, it simply was the language then, and before that trans people were called transsexual, and that also wasn't a slur. So terminology can and does evolve, but it's just so random in the case of capitalization and nobody has ever explained why.
Same reason you sometimes capitalize deaf/Deaf. They are different words.
some do, some don't
I know one word I'll never call them, capital or not. It's also why I can't sing along with Busta Rhymes songs, if I'm being honest.
Some of my favorite media has a lot of n words in it, like Django unchained. You'll catch me dead before I ever say that word.
I know, I am not very comfortable.
I swear no one else in the world manages to.be so obsessed with race than US... Come the fuck on...
Yeah I wonder why...
Surely nothing to do with 400 years of slavery followed by Jim Crow and permanent systemic racism.
I'm not American. I honestly just wondered because the first time I saw this used it was the NY Times saying they were doing it from now on.
I agree, but I also don't think it's bad to ask about it. Nothing wrong with learning and getting clarification.